Just a Kid
by Jideni3
Summary: He'd joined the Autobot army out of sheer desperation, convinced that if he was going to watch his world collapse, he might as well watch with a gun in his hand. He blithely lied about his age, and nobody glanced twice at him after that, too preoccupied with not dying to check his creation day records. It was the start of something. Series of drabbles focusing on TFP Bee.
1. Start

Author's Note: This fic is a collection of Bee-centric vignettes that I wrote while watching TFP. I adore that series, but I also regret the lack of development for certain characters. Optimus, Bee, Breakdown, Raf - they didn't have the depth, the history, or the personality that the others had, and there were moments in the series that suffered for it. These drabbles are my half-assed attempt at addressing one of the more ignored characters.

* * *

Bumblebee had watched everybody die around him. He had watched the war slowly chip away at Optimus, watched as Arcee became bitter and Bulkhead weary, watched as Ratchet withdrew more and more, fixated on his screen, fiddling with buttons. Had watched Optimus match him in silence.

He'd watched as his friends were dismembered in front of him, screaming until their vocalizers fritzed and gave out, watched as their optics were cracked open slowly and then shoved down their bleeding throats. He'd watched as his caretaker swallowed a scraplet willingly, preferring to be eaten from the inside out than devoured from the atrocities of the war. He'd watched acid rain down from enemy ships onto what were once his neighbors, now twisted lumps of greying, cooling metal, the corrosives burning jagged rivulets through armor, joints fusing together and faces melding into unrecognizable husks. He'd watched as lovers searched fruitlessly for their partners, wailing and keening in despair when they found the pieces of their beloved scattered across the city. Bodies piling higher and higher and higher, the cloying smell of energon as it gathered in pools around broken walkways, and the weakening of his own body as fuel became scarce – he saw it all.

He'd joined the Autobot army out of sheer desperation, convinced that if he was going to watch his world collapse, he might as well watch with a gun in his hand. He blithely lied about his age, and nobody glanced twice at him after that, too preoccupied with not dying to check his creation day records. They fitted him with standard-issue blasters and hastily upgraded his armor to something a bit less prone to denting, before sending him out on various intel missions.

It was the start of something.


	2. Medbay

Drabble 2 - Medbay

* * *

The air stank of burned out energon and metal filings. He leaned against a wall, watching wearily as medibots hurried around the makeshift sickbay, adjusting drips and checking screens, injecting fluids and welding abrasions shut. His own arm throbbed. Stray shrapnel from a bomb had torn open a gash from shoulder to elbow joint, and bright blue energon dripped sluggishly down his side. His optics wandered, settling on the mech across from him. No legs, no left arm, no hands, and a hole torn right through the left side, exposing wires and tubes and all sorts of things that shouldn't have ever seen air. Bee shifted his gaze towards the ground. He could hear the mech's fans struggling to cool him down, his ventilations sputtering as broken tubes leaked energon where it shouldn't go. He shuttered his optics.

He was lulled into a quiet stupor, the throbbing in his arm and the rasping ventilations of the mech across from him the only thing he found he could focus on. Two hours passed like this,with him leaning against the wall, eyes shut, when he was jolted from his half-sleep by a hand on his shoulder. Thinking it was a medic, he was disappointed to see that it was instead one of his superiors, Monitor or something like that. He blinked at him, before managing a small "Sir," and straightening up.

Monitor looked him over, faceplates set in a small frown, before seeming to collect himself. He was holding a datapad, and he glanced down at it, optics flicking between the bright screen and Bumblebee's tired body. Finally, he sighed, subspaced his datapad, and folded his hands, staring at Bumblebee with a somber gaze. Bumblebee felt his spark sink. He wasn't going to like this.

"Tyger Pax," Monitor began, "is a point of high interest, as you may know. We've had reports of Decepticons scouting the area, landmines going off, the works. No battles yet - thank Primus - but Decepticons are still showing more interest than Prowl's comfortable with." Monitor reached into a subspace pocket and pulled out a data slug, shoving it into Bumblebee's hands. "Read this. Memorize it. Destroy it. It contains your next mission details, who you're going to be reporting to, and who you're going to be in charge of." He flashed Bumblebee a sad smile. "Congratulations. You're a stealth team leader."

Bumblebee stared at him. The data slug was heavy in his hands. "W-what? No no, this is wrong, that . . that can't be right." His head felt cold. A team leader? He couldn't possibly be a team leader, he'd barely just started out as a scout. This had to be a mistake. "Are you sure it's meant for me?"

The smile on Monitor's face grew even sadder. "Scouts have the second highest death rate, kid. They keep getting caught behind enemy lines, and nobody thinks twice about killing a scout. You've got a good track record, and at the moment, one of the only ones healthy enough to lead this mission."

His words made Bumblebee's head even colder. His arm throbbed harder. He couldn't bring himself to care. What if he failed? What if he lead his team straight to the Decepticons? He didn't have enough experience for this, they couldn't _possibly_ be thinking of putting him in charge. No no no, somebody, somewhere, had made a huge mistake, and he needed to rectify this as soon as possible because there was no way in the _Pit_ he was going to accept this mission-

Monitor clapped a gentle hand on his head. It radiated warmth, the metal of his palms running hot. It felt like it was melting through his helm. "It's okay, kid. You're going to be okay. Take it slow, take it careful, and don't rush things. You'll be fine."

Bumblebee's thoughts were still racing when Monitor left. He stared down, the data slug resting innocently in the middle of his hand. There was a silvery script engraved on the side, marking it as high-importance. Prowl, Bumblebee thought. Prowl was in charge of the Tyger Pax territory. Maybe he could fix this . . .?

He had a vague awareness that the labored ventilations in the background had stopped. He glanced up at the berth plaque, where the patient's name was displayed. It blinked dully.

'AUTOBOT HUBCAP: SCOUT'


	3. Team

Drabble 3 - Team

* * *

Tyger Pax robbed him of his voice and ended in his almost-corpse cooling in some body-pile somewhere, but it was also the catalyst that led to his meeting with Optimus. He supposed it wasn't the usual way of meeting the commander, but he wasn't complaining, especially after the experience landed him straight into Prime's main attack team. Bulkhead had jovially accepted his presence. Sometimes, after particularly rough battles, they would sit together in a somber group of two, patching each other up and waiting for Ratchet's angry concern. They became family, a dysfunctional, frustrated group of four that clung to each other with one-minded determination.


	4. Earth

Drabble 4 - On Earth

* * *

On Earth, Optimus was always the first one up. There would be a small, high-pitched whine as power was rerouted to his processor, and his optics would flicker to a gentle blue. He would lay there, staring at whatever was in front him while gathering his thoughts and emotions, reorganizing his mind into something a tad neater, before finally rolling over and nudging Ratchet awake.

Ratchet was much less graceful in his return to consciousness. Perhaps it was old age, or maybe just a side-effect of his acerbic personality, but something in his upper chest always made a loud clanking noise, followed by a series of soft pops and pings and engine revs as his body reluctantly booted up for another day's worth of work. It took longer for him to wake up, a bit more nudging on Optimus' part before Ratchet was willing to give up recharge and acknowledge the world around him. He would - after a series of mumbled protests and inaudible threats - slowly unshutter his optics and peer blearily at Optimus, a look of sleepy accusation written across his face. Optimus would say nothing, but his optics would brighten, his mouth would soften. They would lay there in silence, staring around at the room and each other, gathering themselves, composing themselves, until finally Optimus would rise to his feet and walk heavily out of the room, leaving Ratchet behind to rub at his face and gripe about this and that.

Bulkhead was often the next to wake up. Like Ratchet, he was rarely at his best upon waking, and often went through his morning activities - perimeter check, screen check, cam check, base patrol - only partially alert. It really wasn't until he had returned - when Optimus had finished extracting energon from their precious few crystals and Ratchet had finished updating logs on his hotchpotch computer - that he could really call himself awake.

They'd spent the next few moments together, gathered around around a cluster of trash and spare parts that they affectionately dubbed the 'team table'. Optimus would give Ratchet and Bulkhead their morning rations, cradling a small cube himself, and then they'd sit and talk about whatever came to mind. Bulkhead would update Optimus on his cam and perimeter check findings, and inform both on the weather outside. Ratchet and Optimus would muse about duties and responsibilities, going through an unspoken checklist of daily must-dos, and they'd all mull over possible Decepticon activity. In-between conversation, they'd sip at their cubes of energon, wincing at the crude taste, replete with earth-based impurities and unwanted mineral deposits that - despite their best extraction efforts - persisted in the fuel.

At this point, there was a fifty-fifty chance that Bumblebee would wake up in time to join the conversation. There were nights when the base's noises - the crackling of the earth, the humming of the monitors, the high-pitched ringing of the security cams, the human cars driving past and the scritch-scratch of burrowing animals and nightcalls of insects and the endless creaking noise and Primus wouldn't it just _shut up_ - overwhelmed him to the point of sleeplessness. On these nights, he'd stay up and - like any good scout - record the sounds, noting their origin, their purpose, and whether they indicated a threat. He'd filled endless amounts of datapads with this type of information - every noise, every color, every rock, everything and anything that might trigger his scout programming. It was a compulsive act, meant to satisfy a function-based hypersensitive sensory-network, and assuage a trauma-based paranoia. Unfortunately, it also led to a rather persistent insomnia.

The rest of the team knew this, and usually - barring the occasional skirmish with the opposing side - let him sleep in.


	5. Kid

Drabble 5 - Just a Kid

* * *

They thought he was a child, and in many ways, they were right. He was by far the youngest on the team, the newest, the freshest. In his old room, he'd had posters lined up over his recharge slab, bright splashes of color that clashed horribly with his green walls, and old datapads filled with bedtime stories from back when he was too young to even read basic standard-Iaconian. He still had some of those datapads, and he'd pull them out occasionally and show them to Bulkhead. Sometimes, early on the weekends when the morning sun had yet to heat up the endless expanses of iron and rust, he'd shirk off his monitor-sitting and sneak in some off-planet cartoon-vids. (Ratchet made sure to give him a thirty-minute time window, before 'catching' him and redirecting him to his screens). Bulkhead told him jokes, clapped him on the shoulder, celebrated his successes on the field. Ratchet yanked and griped and smacked him upside the head, but more gently, more softly than he did anybody else. On more than one occasion, he'd seen Optimus send him a small smile. It's because you're young, they told him. You're just a kid.

(His quarters at the base were tiny and cramped and so, so empty, lined with gray steel walls and lit by a dim lamp that sputtered and whined and made a humming noise that, sometimes, at night, changed into a little chant. _Kill yourself. Kill yourself-_.)

* * *

_But you're just as crazy as the rest of them. Just as twisted, just as damaged, just as corrupt and dirty and evil as the Decepticon troops are. How many lives have you taken? How many heads have you ripped off? How many times have you blasted soldiers in the spark? You're no Autobot._

* * *

He hid, he lied, he maimed, he murdered, and he did so with growing skill, and each Decepticon mook was rendered a mere notch on his gun. Several times, he wondered if he had gone insane, had completely lost it - particularly on the nights after a gruesome battle, when energon stains were still drying on his forelimbs, and bits of the enemy were embedded in his joints. He wondered if the war would ever end, if he would die and the war would still persist. He wondered if the Autobots were fighting for a lost cause. He wondered if he would be able to last until the end, and if the war were to ever end, if he'd be able to adjust to a life without dodging laserfire or staunching a gushing wound.

He'd shutter his optics and see the cooling faces of his neighbors, the energon gushing out of his creator's mouth, the blasters pointed at his face. Then he'd open his eyes and stare out into the sky.

No, he supposed. It would never end.

(If he was a kid, then maybe the AllSpark would accept him, even with all those sins ruining his spark.)


End file.
